A question was posed to Walter Block about “the limits of libertarian self-defense”. The Q & A appears here. I’m not constrained by the non-aggression axiom because, for one thing, I think it’s a general proviso. As such, it does not provide answers to every specific situation that one may imagine. For a second thing, the terms of it are undefined. It invariably depends on property rights and no one knows what property is justly held and what is not. There has been too much water over the dam, too much past taking and receiving that cannot be justified, too much property that has changed hands unjustly, too much current unjust taking and receiving going on, so that it’s impossible to say whether a given person, who almost always both takes and receives property that doesn’t belong to him, has a right unilaterally to exert violence on someone else to rectify what he perceives as an unjust taking. Because it’s impossible for anyone to judge without himself being judged in these cases, I think very definitely that one should not take the (libertarian) law into one’s own hands. One should not use violence against a person as a result of acting as one’s own prosecutor, trial lawyer, judge and jury. This kind of vigilante action denies the accused rights to have the matter considered by a body of persons using procedures to develop proper evidence, weighing of the evidence and proper remedies. Jumping right from some hypothetical into a violent solution is wrong. I would never recommend it under the notion that it’s self-defense or that one is somehow entitled to do it. This is not what is meant by self-defense. That is something involving a much more serious threat to one’s life and limb than a matter of money.

There are other ways of coming at this question. Clearly, if everyone has his own interpretation of the underpinnings of libertarian law, that is, ideas of just property, the nature of aggression, and the nature of appropriate responses to aggressions, and I think that people will indeed have widely varying interpretations, then we can predict chaos when a social idea of justice and all these details are eliminated in favor of individual law codes devised by anyone who pleases. Such a situation will prove intolerable, Hobbesian as it is, and people will quickly coalesce around codes that they feel are “right” or that they can subscribe to, even if these are supplied competitively by competing companies that command fees to provide security and justice. Whatever entities form, they will take on a social character. The individual cannot hope to enforce his own justice, generally speaking. There will be some rugged individualists who will, but they may find life is quite difficult.

If persons aggregate into groups, they essentially form a “people” with a uniform law code and uniform justice procedures. At that point, we may look at matters through the eyes of the Declaration of Independence. It refers to a people retaining or having a right of revolution — collectively, not individually. This right can be invoked under certain conditions that are spelled out. The grievances that spurred that particular revolution are spelled out clearly. There is no attempt to rectify on an individual basis the prior wrongs. There is no attempt to say that individuals are entitled to act violently on their own judgments to recover what they conceive of as stolen property or to injure or kill the government against which action is being taken. Such matters will be done together as part of a mass movement that has the authority to do it, such authority being conceived of as a right to revolution that rests in a people. A people speaks with a bolder and more unified voice against an offending government. Its right can be articulated and accepted more clearly. Its use of force can be justified. It may not go about it properly and waste the goodwill. The revolution may deteriorate into its own injustice, but the opportunity is there, which is why the words “can be justified” are appropriate.

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